Reminder: Obamacare Is Still A Giant Cronyistic Disaster

Reminder: Obamacare Is Still A Giant Cronyistic Disaster

• The problem isn’t that Aetna is leaving the Obamacare exchanges. 
• The problem is that Aetna was in the exchanges to begin with

It’d be a shame if something terrible happened to that poorly constructed, expensive, low-enrollment, government-run, fabricated health-insurance marketplace scheme that we’re helping you prop up. — Aetna to Barack Obama, basically
So a giant rent-seeking insurance company is accused of having threatened to leave Obamacare’s health insurance “marketplace” if the government didn’t approve its giant merger.
If true, this would be the least surprising development in the past six years of Obamacare fiascos. Any giant regulatory scheme bringing together big business and big government inevitably leads to cronyism and corruption.
Not long after the Justice Department blocked Aetna’s merger with Humana, the company announced it would be scaling back participation in ACA.
Now, Obamacare consumers in 11 states won’t be able to keep their insurance even though, one imagines, they like their plans.
But choices are getting scarcer by the year. 
Aetna is now one of around a dozen major insurance providers who’ve dropped completely out or scaled back participation in exchanges.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study estimates that 664 counties will feature only a single insurer on Obamacare exchanges in 2017.
In 2016, it was 215. Four entire states will have only one Obamacare insurer. In one Arizona county, there may be none.
Since Obamacare, in effect, solidified in-state insurance cartels, the exchanges are starting to look very much the same.
But opening markets up across state (and national) lines is a silly idea,
I bet..."